Ravnica

by Cory Herndon

  The cyclops, naturally, snapped first. With a roar answered by his armies a hundredfold, the one-eyed giant charged the angel, who hunched and prepared to block her foe’s first strike. Cisarzim’s axe glinted at the top of its arc and swung downward, a strike the angel’s sword easily parried and diverted. The angel struck back in a stylized, exaggerated swing that the cyclops deflected with equal agility, rebounding once more with the axe in the rhythmic dance of combat.

  As the history books recorded, on the third clash of weapons, the figure in the black cloak descended from the rafters to the sound of a soft, steady drum, like a beating heart, and interrupted the combat with his very presence. The rest of the assembly went silent, even the duelists, as the tall, lanky figure alighted between the two foes.

  “Noble duelists, my treasured foes,” the cloaked figure said with a voice like oil. Melodramatic oil at that, Kos mused. “I, Szadek, Lord of Whispers, do bid you pause. The future of the world hangs in the balance. We stand at the very crossroads of destiny.” The figure raised a pale, long-fingered hand to the sky, and a crash of thunder echoed over the plain. Dark clouds settled against the ancient sky, casting the scene anew in torchlit gloom.

  Szadek pulled back the hood of his cloak to reveal a pale, cold face with glittering, black obsidian eyes. Even blacker was the slick, greasy hair tied in a complex arrangement atop his head. Two silver canines that Kos found just a bit too long to be believable projected impressively over his lower lip.

  “You tread on my battleground, vampire,” the cyclops roared. He reared back and raised Skullhammer overhead. “Give me one reason not to destroy you for that insult.”

  “I can give you several,” said a man in simple blue and white robes who stepped forward from the crowd. His bright eyes twinkled and a few rays of sunlight broke through the cover over his head. His white beard, bald pate, and weathered, sun-beaten face made him look like a farmer, but he wore the attire of a senator. He pulled a scroll from his sleeve and unfurled the document, which flashed in a precisely aimed sunbeam. “I present a pact. A simple system that respects the autonomy of the castes, with independent territory for all—your own kingdoms, with which to do as you please. Each caste provides something key to the survival of this new, united Ravnica. I, Azor, with my allies in both camps of this endless caste war, have conceived something more than a document. When our leaders, the paruns, sign it in blood, its magic shall ensure peace for as long as Ravnica exists. My friends, my enemies, this,” the man finished with a flourish, “is the Guildpact.”

  “More laws,” the cyclops scoffed, and laughed like an exploding volcano. “You are a small, ridiculous little human, and you shall be swept aside. You haven’t the honor of a mossdog.”

  “Perhaps,” the bald man said as a hush fell over the assembled armies that, very soon, would become the ten guilds of Ravnica. “Or perhaps you, Cisarzim, can be made to see the wisdom of my proposal.”

  Not that there actually were ten guilds of Ravnica anymore, if there ever had been. Like most educated Ravnicans, Kos knew that Szadek, the vampire guildmaster of the Dimir, was at best a folk myth. The historical “Lord of Whispers” was believed to have been a particularly long-lived necromancer who raised a skeletal army in the early days of the Guildpact peace in a failed bid for power. The first guildmasters, the paruns, destroyed him for attempting to lead an army against the city, the one Guildpact statute that all guilds were required to enforce equally. In ten thousand years of history, Kos could count the recorded violations of the first law on one hand. One had to be both ambitious and insane to attempt a takeover of Ravnica, which meant facing down every other guild, including most likely your own.

  No one knew exactly where the legends of Szadek’s presence at the Guildpact signing began, though Kos’s personal hypothesis was that the Selesnya Conclave had added the story of the vampire lord as a necessary foil for their own beliefs. In Kos’s experience the more dedicated the believer in Mat’selesnya, the more likely the Selesnyan was to believe that Szadek, the hidden evil in the frozen depths, the all-purpose reason for why things weren’t perfect in the world, was a real being and a palpable force constantly working against the Conclave.

  Kos had been at his job for far too long to believe a mysterious bogeyman was responsible for all the evils of the world. Despite ten thousand years of Guildpact peace, or perhaps because of it, there was plenty of evil to go around without a shadowy Tenth Guild behind it all.

  The wojek set his empty mug on the floor. He felt agitated. He couldn’t fathom how drunk he must have been to let Feather convince him to let the show run through the curtain call. Kos sighed. After a promising start, this bloody historical battle had become a dull, talky enterprise. In a way, it helped Kos’s mood, knowing he was going to shut the production down. In a more immediate way, the droning voice of the actor going on and on about the many holy virtues of the Guildpact wasn’t helping his headache.

  “Fool!” the cyclops roared just as Kos accepted another mug full of ogrish coffee. He jumped in alarm and almost dumped his drink on the goblin. “I am the Lord of Chaos! The destroyer of laws! I will not be bound by your weakness, and I will strike down the champion of order!”

  “What is he doing?” Kos whispered in surprise.

  A nearby theatergoer, not realizing the ’jek was thinking out loud, shushed him.

  This wasn’t right. The cyclops had jumped ahead. The Clash of Two Champions shouldn’t have begun for a while yet. The remaining guild paruns hadn’t even made their entrances from the wings yet. There duel that brought Cisarzim and the Gruul Clans into the Guildpact agreement came much later. It was the traditional climax of the classic story, but less than halfway through the first act, Cisarzim, Lord of Chaos, was off the script.

  So off, in fact, that with a mighty, bloodthirsty howl, the one-eyed giant drove Skullhammer against the side of the bald, bearded man’s head.

  “Now that’s something new,” Kos heard someone in the audience say. He didn’t hear the rest because he was already charging down the aisles toward the stage, baton in hand.

  The startlingly realistic replica of Skullhammer crumpled and snapped off against the bald actor’s head, its lightweight paper and cork frame no match for a solid human skull. The shock of the attack knocked the robed man back into the chorus, dazed and bleeding from the temple. Kos cleared the steps onto the stage. Boos and shouts of alarm erupted through the audience, and he thought he heard at least one loud complaint about the anachronism of a wojek at the Guildpact signing. Sure, a mythical vampire doesn’t bother them, but a wojek incongruously storming the stage they complain about.

  “Cisarzim” chose that moment to step over the edge, going from merely enraged to murderously berserk in the time it took him to spot Kos, and he turned on the wojek immediately. But the cyclops’s fist collided with the angel’s open palm on its way to Kos’s head.

  “I’m afraid the show’s over, boys,” Kos said. “You,” he added, pointing at the still-growling cyclops, “are under arrest for trade interference and associated violations of Guildpact Statutes. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to remove your … costume and peaceably accompany me to the Tenth Leaguehall. At that time you may make a statement in your defense and, if you cannot afford bail, will be held until your hearing.” Kos put a hand on the silver lockrings hooked to his belt and jerked a thumb at the tall angel who held the cyclops’s fist in her own.

  “Please desist,” the angel said. “You are already under arrest. Do not compound your sins by continuing to trample upon a perfectly good script.”

  “I might argue that last part, Feather,” Kos said. “You were great though. Really believable. He giving you any trouble?”

  The cloaked “vampire” with the less-than-authentic fangs raised his free hand and cleared his throat. “Excuse me? What exactly is going on here? And you,” he added, pointing a long, white finger at the angel, “you’re out of character.”

  “Sir, unless you
want to come down to the Leaguehall as well, I suggest you shut it. You’re already in enough trouble. Feather, if he talks again hit him.”

  “Right,” the angel replied.

  “You’re a—You’re really an angel?”

  “What did you think I was?”

  “An understudy. I trusted you, Miss Per—”

  “Please do not say that,” Feather interrupted. “You may, however, call me ‘Officer’ or ‘Constable.’” With that the angel clamped her other hand on the ersatz vampire’s shoulder.

  “But, ouch, but please, you don’t understand,” the vampire said. His silky, charismatic voice had diminished to a comically squeaky pitch. “Well, I’m sure we’ll co-operate. But please, let us finish the show. Mr. Gullmott’s having an, er …”

  “An, er …?” Kos prompted.

  “You don’t want to take him out of character, especially if he’s improvising.”

  As if on cue, the cyclops howled in rage, but Feather continued to hold him fast. Kos could see the powerful muscles of the angel’s bare arm tense tighter than a Golgari bowstring, and purple veins bulged with effort.

  “Please, again, I beg you, he’s in character, if we could finish—”

  A grim smile cracked the wojek’s sun-dark face, and he turned to the vampire. “I don’t care if he’s in labor. You, one-eye, and this whole company have unlawfully expanded your playhouse into an area designated for market stalls, thereby obstructing the conduct of trade. We’ve let you get away with it because no one complained, but in case you didn’t notice there’s a decamillennial coming. There are people who want to put their market stalls up. The people you’ve got sitting here in the dark could be buying trinkets. And meat.”

  “I like meat,” the angel said. As far as Kos knew, the angel didn’t even eat, but he appreciated her getting into the spirit of things.

  “Me too,” the wojek said. “There you go, sir. We like meat, and the law’s the law. Feather, could you let the crowd kno—”

  Feather’s iron grip on the “cyclops” finally slipped and a gauntlet containing a very solid fist collided violently with the back of Kos’s helmet and knocked it into the audience. The helmet probably saved the wojek’s life, but he still hit the stage hard under a heap of snarling cyclops. The audience, seated in what had until very recently been the Gullmott Players’ Little Theater annex, gasped. A few screamed, and several leaped to their feet and headed for the exits. The “cyclops” wrestled the lawman to the floor and drove blow after armored blow into his chest.

  “How many people fought in the Clash of Two Champions, anyway?” a puzzled woman in the front row asked her husband, somehow oblivious to the fact that if the cyclops had carried Kos a few more steps, they would have ended up in the couple’s lap.

  “Not this many, I think, dear,” her companion said.

  The angel released the remaining actor as the onstage area quickly emptied of all but the two wojeks, the former vampire, and the raving, violent actor in full cyclops mode. Feather tackled the raving cyclops-actor head-on and pulled him off Kos’s chest. The angel and her foe rolled across the planks, collided with and went through a burlap screen painted to look like siege machinery, and disappeared into the wings when the screen crumpled to the floor. What was left of the chorus scattered in panic, even as the audience, by and large, remained glued to their seats and the sounds of hand-to-hand combat continuing offstage.

  Kos staggered to his feet and grabbed the “vampire” by the hood of his long cloak. “What do you mean ‘He’s in character?’”

  The actor winced but replied, “Mr. Gullmott. He’s been using a performance enchantment.”

  The wojek twisted the hood of the costume in a way that caused the clasp to press against the actor’s throat. “And what is that exactly? I don’t get to watch theater much. Too busy rounding up scofflaws, you know. That something like what you were wearing?”

  “No, we all use glamours,” the actor coughed. “Theater couldn’t exist without them. But Mr. Gullmott, he got this magic belt buckle from some merchant the day we arrived. It was supposed to help him get over his stage fright, make him really believe in the performance and shut out the audience. He’s been having trouble with the Presentation of the Guildpact scene, and it must have just boiled over tonight. Please stop choking me, Officer.”

  “He’s angling for the lead at the gallows if he doesn’t stop kicking my friend like that.” The wojek released the actor and jabbed a finger in the man’s chest. “That must have been some stage fright. Doesn’t he run this theater? He’s on record as the owner.”

  “Yeah, sure,” the actor said. “It’s tragic really. He’s scared to death of being onstage and in love with it at the same time. You know, the thrill of performance, the spontaneity of new ideas that one can only discover onstage. …”

  “He’s the person who’s broken the law. That’s all I need to know. Feather, you all right back there?” Kos shouted at the scuffle that sounded like it had moved from offstage and now continued backstage, behind the set.

  “I shall be victorious,” the angel’s powerful voice reverberated in theater. “Though this struggle is unexpectedly interest—Excuse me.”

  “Fool! No servant of order can stand before Cisar—OOF!”

  “A moment, please.”

  The sounds of crashing set pieces and cyclopean snarls continued. “So how long before this performance enhancement wears off?” Kos asked.

  “Performance enchantment. And it depends on the character he’s playing,” the actor said. “Nothing like this has happened before. Then again, no one has ever barged onto our stage before or impersonated an understudy, even if she did turn out to be an actual angel. Was all that really necessary?”

  “You’d be surprised at what we do for fun around here, sir.”

  “Please,” the actor said. “We didn’t mean to violate any law. If you had just let us finish. We’re new in town. Mr. Drinj never said anything about market stalls.”

  Kos barely heard the actor’s plea. The moment the man hit the word “finish” a tangle of wings, legs, horns, and fists crashed through the rear of the set and rolled back out onto the stage. They ended up almost on top of Kos’s feet.

  Feather looked up at him with only the slightest hint of concern. On Feather’s face, even a slight hint was enough to concern Kos. “Lieutenant, I suspect I may require your assistance after all,” the angel said matter-of-factly as the raging cyclops—no, an enchanted actor named Gullmott, Kos reminded himself—managed to pin her bound wings to the floor.

  The wojek lieutenant drew his baton and circled the combatants, watching for an opening. As he sidestepped around the grappling foes, Kos twisted the hilt of the weapon, which hummed at the very edge of his hearing.

  After a few seconds, the wojek finally found the opening he was looking for. He aimed along the pendrek’s length like a goblin drawing a bead with a bam-stick and targeted Gullmott’s back. Kos took a deep breath and shouted, “Davatsei.”

  A silvery-blue ball of energy the size of Feather’s fist shot from the end of the weapon and slammed into the actor’s back. The energy dissipated on contact and briefly enveloped the enraged actor in a sparking blue-green corona.

  “That may have been a mistake,” Kos heard the woman in the front row comment.

  The blast of energy should have knocked the actor out cold. Perhaps in a way it had, and the enchantment had taken over completely, for now his target was madder than ever. The enraged actor lashed into Kos’s midsection with a backhanded slap while he kept the angel’s wings trapped under his heavy boot. The blow caught the wojek completely off guard, and Kos hit the stage for the second time in as many minutes. His pendrek slipped from his grasp and clattered across the hardwood.

  The wojek scrambled into a defensive posture and called to the vampire-actor, who was backpedaling for the wings of the stage. “Do you have any idea how to get that blasted belt off him?” Kos demanded.

  “
Very carefully,” the actor said.

  “Stick with tragedy, sir,” Kos snapped.

  The lawman returned to the angel. She had worked her wings free but was still on her back and now had to contend with the cyclops’s hands closing around her throat. “Feather!” Kos called, “Get that belt!”

  The angel brought her knee up and into her opponent’s waist. The cyclops shimmered like an image in a warped mirror and doubled over. Gullmott howled like an injured beast. The enchantment still had the actor in its grip, but at least the cyclops no longer seemed in control of the fight—even if it was in control of Gullmott.

  The angel rolled off the floor with acrobatic ease and was on Gullmott before he could do anything but clutch his gut and roar.

  “You will yield to wojek authority,” the angel intoned. She pulled the actor to a standing position and held him against the stage-right wall with one hand pressed against his chest. “Or we will use extreme measures.”

  “You really don’t want to see her extreme measures, Mr. Gullmott,” the other wojek said. Kos stooped to retrieve his baton. He tapped one finger to the star on the breast of his crimson uniform. “This means that you just broke a much more serious law. You’re already looking at permanent exile. Don’t push it.”

  “I yield to no authority of Order,” Gullmott snarled as he squirmed under Feather’s hand. “I shall crush your laws beneath my the soles of my sandaled—”

  “Oh, forget it.” Kos drew his short sword and approached the struggling actor, who Feather now had in a chokehold. “Hold still,” the ’jek said and carefully—but not too carefully—slipped the blade between the leather belt and the actor’s thick, padded costume, and in a flash of steel it was over. The belt buckle shattered like cheap glass when it hit the stage, and Gullmott’s raving monologue ceased immediately. He slumped to the floor, unconscious. With one last nod to the dramatic, the battered cyclops mask split in two and fell to the hardwood on either side of him. The enchantment must have been the only thing keeping the actor going.